Documents rendered via varying rendering devices such as, for example, printers from different vendors, often generate dissimilar results. The output from such rendering devices varies due to setup conditions and the approach taken to place particular marks on media. Conventionally, a “write white” approach may be utilized wherein a spot is swept across a photoreceptor belt, where no marks are desired. Many rendering devices utilize the opposite approach, wherein the spot is located where marks are desired. One problem with such approaches is that the average bitmap images rendered on a monochrome “write white” system are typically lighter than the same images rendered on other devices. For example, a document that includes binarized images while being targeted for a particular rendering device may appear to exhibit an erroneous darkness level when transmitted to a different rendering device.
Currently, such problems may be addressed by restricting rendering of the documents to certain rendering devices or by miss tuning one or both of the conflicting rendering devices. The majority of prior art approaches normalize the rendered output from different rendering devices. In particular, there have been attempts to manipulate halftones, adjust actual dot size gain, and/or image development time. Such approaches, however, have an impact of the reusability of the rendering system for a designed output and are thus not appropriate for many rendering applications.
Based on the forgoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved method and system for controlling the darkness level of image data (e.g., bitmap images) in order to assist output matching between dissimilar rendering devices. A need also exists for selectively testing and choosing the darkening level for image data, as described in greater detail herein.